Cheers Darlin'
by ohponthavemercy
Summary: Enjolras realized he may have irreversibly screwed it up with Eponine much too late.


**note: title taken from damien rice's song of the same nameit highly recommend :)**

"A toast, to the happy couple!" Grantaire bellows over the din of chattering conversations and melodious laughs, silverware clinking against plates against barely audible music.

Enjolras raises his wineglass with the rest of the party, but he isn't really watching the rosy-cheeked drunk swaying a little above the crowd.

She looks so, so beautiful.

The glow of the fairy lights that are strung up all over the garden brings out the flecks of gold in her eyes, the gloss of her hair. She's lovely, like something blooming quietly under the night sky.

It's not the outraged, stormy beauty that she had possessed, his personal hurricane to the very end, in their final fight, over six months ago.

But that's the way they had always been - for them, it had been the flash floods, the wildfires, the summer typhoons. Always. How was he supposed to have known then that it would have been the last one?

_ "What are we doing here, Enjolras?" She had demanded. "What do I really mean to you?" _

Combeferre stands up and raps his glass lightly with a fork. "Eponine, my darling skeptic. You question and challenge everything and anything,"- here, chuckles reverberate throughout the party - "but never doubt that you mean everything in the world to me."

Cosette and Musichetta loudly "awww" while Eponine smiles, tilting her head in that faintly embarrassed way of hers as 'Ferre bends down to kiss her cheek.

Her eyes close briefly, and it feels like a knife twisting in his chest.

Later, Enjolras refuses to partake in the dancing, sitting on a low brick wall to watch Joly and Musichetta and Bousset pressed together in unabashed bliss as Marius dips a giggling Cosette. Eponine herself goes whirling by in her dress that is an airy confection of lace and tulle, the updo the girls must have toiled over for hours already coming undone. Little curls frame her face as she throws herself into the music with reckless abandon.

_ "Tell me what's going on here," he can hear her snarl. "Because lately all you've been doing is dancing around me, and don't get me wrong, it's been fun, but what do you want here, Enjolras? I can't read your mind - do you want me to stay or to leave or what?" _

A shadow falls across his face. "There you are, " she's beaming down at him now, looking charmingly flushed. "What are you doing, hiding here? I happen to know you're an excellent dancer. "

He looks up at her, forcing a lighthearted tone as he stage-whispers, "Shush, keep your voice down. I have a reputation to maintain."

Her laughter is as easy as rainfall, and he's almost tempted to close his eyes, let it wash over him. "Right, right, always the marble man," she says with calm amusement, no lingering traces of bitterness there. Is it wrong of him to wish there was?

She sits down beside him, kicking her shoes off like she was always wont to do, still the same incorrigible Eponine. "What did you think? I didn't screw up anything too major - you should be proud of me."

"The cake was awful, no offense," he points out dryly, but what he wants to say is, but I did. I messed up everything, didn't I?

"Why do you think I smashed my piece on 'Ferre's face?" She snorts, and they sit there, chuckling for a bit, and it's so much like how they used to be that he slips and almost puts his arm around her shoulders, almost pulls her close as they both look up at the stars.

In the end, though, it is Combeferre who walks over. "Mind if I cut in and escort my bride home?"

_ Yes._ "Congratulations again," Enjolras murmurs with a half-smile, but they are already strolling away.

Combeferre wraps his arm around her with the comfortable grace of someone who's done it a thousand times, and Eponine tilts her head to rest it in the crook where his neck meets his shoulder, their free hands intertwined.

_ "What do you want, Enjolras?" She'd asked, her eyes fierce, waiting for his answer. "What do you want?" _

"You," he whispers to an empty garden, six months too late.

May 22, 2013

74 notes


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